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Main Authors: GU, Qiqi, Wu, Chenpeng, Shi, Heng, Yao, Jianguo
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.22035
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author GU, Qiqi
Wu, Chenpeng
Shi, Heng
Yao, Jianguo
author_facet GU, Qiqi
Wu, Chenpeng
Shi, Heng
Yao, Jianguo
contents Recent research has focused on accelerating stencil computations by exploiting emerging hardware like Tensor Cores. To leverage these accelerators, the stencil operation must be transformed to matrix multiplications. However, this transformation introduces undesired sparsity into the kernel matrix, leading to significant redundant computation. In this paper, we present SPIDER, the first system to turn this unresolved sparsity into an optimization opportunity by exploring the potential of Sparse Tensor Cores (SpTCs) for stencil acceleration. Specifically, SPIDER introduces an efficient and elegant transformation method that integrates two cooperative techniques: an ahead-of-time strided swapping transformation for kernel matrices and an on-the-fly row-swapping mechanism for inputs. This rule-based approach effectively transforms stencil computation into operations compatible with SpTCs, introducing only slight compile-time overhead and zero runtime overhead. Additionally, SPIDER incorporates multiple optimizations to maximize computational efficiency. Experimental evaluations demonstrate that SPIDER outperforms vendor library cuDNN by 6.20$\times$ and state-of-the-art (SOTA) Tensor Core-based approaches (ConvStencil, FlashFFTStencil, etc.) by 2.00$\times$ on average.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_22035
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SPIDER: Unleashing Sparse Tensor Cores for Stencil Computation via Strided Swapping
GU, Qiqi
Wu, Chenpeng
Shi, Heng
Yao, Jianguo
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Recent research has focused on accelerating stencil computations by exploiting emerging hardware like Tensor Cores. To leverage these accelerators, the stencil operation must be transformed to matrix multiplications. However, this transformation introduces undesired sparsity into the kernel matrix, leading to significant redundant computation. In this paper, we present SPIDER, the first system to turn this unresolved sparsity into an optimization opportunity by exploring the potential of Sparse Tensor Cores (SpTCs) for stencil acceleration. Specifically, SPIDER introduces an efficient and elegant transformation method that integrates two cooperative techniques: an ahead-of-time strided swapping transformation for kernel matrices and an on-the-fly row-swapping mechanism for inputs. This rule-based approach effectively transforms stencil computation into operations compatible with SpTCs, introducing only slight compile-time overhead and zero runtime overhead. Additionally, SPIDER incorporates multiple optimizations to maximize computational efficiency. Experimental evaluations demonstrate that SPIDER outperforms vendor library cuDNN by 6.20$\times$ and state-of-the-art (SOTA) Tensor Core-based approaches (ConvStencil, FlashFFTStencil, etc.) by 2.00$\times$ on average.
title SPIDER: Unleashing Sparse Tensor Cores for Stencil Computation via Strided Swapping
topic Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.22035